


Training the Perfect Soldier

by Hikaru Yuy (hikaruyuy)



Series: AC Worldbuilding Courtesy of Karu [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25341595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaruyuy/pseuds/Hikaru%20Yuy
Summary: What exactly goes into training the so-called "perfect soldier"? Due to the Powers That Be having a severe oversight in the "character backstory" department, this question is unfortunately without any official answer. That's what this meta is for, however, filling in all of the blanks that the creators missed. How was Pilot 01 "made"? By someone with plans for world domination teaming up with a mad scientist who values humanity a little higher than the former does.
Series: AC Worldbuilding Courtesy of Karu [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835275
Kudos: 4
Collections: Worldbuilding in the AC Universe





	Training the Perfect Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first volume of Rhythm Generation; two outlines, three drafts, and a lot of information rearranging later, I had a finished piece I felt comfortable showing off. Researching this topic was Not Easy because supersoldiers currently don't exist so it's all the realm of science fiction. Also how does one create a Gundam pilot anyway? Those don't exist either. So it was a challenge and I did it by modifying things that already exist and just a whole lot of contemplation. Think I was successful.
> 
> If you want the psychology behind this "perfect soldier", I have a meta piece for that too, also posted here.

Have you ever pondered the question, “What kind of training did Heero receive in order to become the ‘perfect soldier’?” It’s a question with many different branches, one of which is, “WHY did Doctor J train Heero the way that he did?” No matter what source material one looks at, there’s never any explicit answers given—not even _Frozen Teardrop_ touches on it. The only source that has any mention of Heero’s training is in the art book that comes with the Gundam Wing Collector’s Ultra Edition bluray box set wherein Ikeda Musashi, upon being asked about it, states that the lack of mention was an oversight on his part and that it’s something he regrets not developing further. Endless Waltz makes the implication that Doctor J oversees training Heero, but that brings us back to the original question: how?

What exactly did Heero’s training consist of? Did Heero ever actually undergo the retraining process Dekim Barton ordered after that botched mission or did Doctor J intervene?

Before we can delve into that, we need some background.

**I. The Background of a “Perfect Soldier”**

How do you turn a boy who is supposedly kindhearted and loathes killing into a cold-hearted soldier who obeys his orders without question? From what Doctor J tells Relena in episode 5, Heero’s dedication to his mission is such that he won’t hesitate to get rid of obstacles in his way or get rid of anything that impedes his mission’s success. How did a boy like Heero end up chosen to be the “perfect soldier”? Was he part of Dekim Barton’s plan, or did Doctor J like the cut of his jib and decide to ask if he’d like to come aboard of his own accord?

As a reminder to readers, the whole reason Operation Meteor was created was so Dekim Barton could get revenge for Heero Yuy’s assassination—or at least that’s what the initial plan was. The ones responsible for Heero Yuy’s assassination are OZ, who hired Odin Lowe, a former OZ sniper who at that point is now freelancing as an assassin. If Dekim wants revenge for what happened to the Colonial leader and figurehead of total pacifism, it would make sense to go after those responsible, right? The Gundam pilots targeting OZ makes sense—except that was after Operation M was modified.

At some point, Dekim Barton seems to lose sight of his own plan the moment his plot for world domination comes into play. No longer is it just about revenge, he wants Earth to suffer for the sins committed by a few. He’s going to rule over Earth, show the supremacy of the colonies, and remove anyone and anything that stands in his way.

In AC188, Dekim Barton shoots and killed Heero Yuy’s assassin. That should’ve been the end of it—he’s gotten his revenge. He’s concocted this whole plan to get Odin Lowe out in the open: Dekim is the one who hired Odin Lowe to silence General Septem of the Alliance, who is the one who ordered the assassination of Heero Yuy in the first place. Having been aware of Odin Lowe’s services, Dekim would know that Odin Lowe has an apprentice. What if Dekim decided to pick this child to become the human weapon he plans to use to get back at Earth for the death of Heero Yuy? It would be an incredible “screw you” to Odin Lowe, to use his apprentice to avenge the man he killed back in AC175. At the same time, perhaps it’s just coincidence.

Doctor J mentions to Relena in episode 5 that the reason he helps her is because she has the same look in her eyes that Heero does. This is notable because when J first encountered Heero, roaming around a colony lost since his mentor’s death, he commented that the kid had “good eyes” and asked him to become a Gundam pilot. Heero agrees, but only after remembering what Odin taught him about doing what his heart told him. Doctor J sees something unique in Heero, but what is it exactly? Is it the fact that Heero looked lost (he had no home, no family, no name, nothing at all) and potentially searching for something? Or was it something else? Or maybe some combination of looking lost and trying to find a purpose?

Regardless of how the Barton Foundation comes to possess this nameless boy, he already comes with a few skills. We know that Odin Lowe taught Heero how to shoot a gun and the art of assassination, despite Heero having reservations about it. In addition, Odin taught Heero everything he would need to survive out on his own, should that happen, which means that Heero likely has very practical survival knowledge and knows how to blend in and act like he belongs, which he shows off a few times in series. _Frozen Teardrop_ gives us instances of Heero doing recon work, scoping out a destination and analyzing the scene before he goes in for the kill, and while in _Episode Zero_ we see Heero shoot an RPG at OZ cadets, that’s the only time we see him involved in any kind of action at that time.

So, by the time Doctor J finds him, Heero is already trained to kill and possesses knowledge of all the calculation and footwork it requires before and after. Doctor J saw something special in him for sure and made an offer that Heero didn’t refuse. Why didn’t Heero refuse it? Was it purely because of what Odin Lowe had said about it only taking one person to change the course of history, or was it because at that point he literally had nothing to lose? More than likely it’s both. If someone was going to change the world, it might as well be the kid with no name, family, home, or future to speak of.

**II. Combat & Pilot Training**

Regardless of how or why Doctor J acquired Heero, J took him back to the Barton Foundation, where Dekim decided to have Heero train to be the pilot for Wing Gundam. Heero needed to go from average to above average and further still to embody Dekim’s idea of a perfect soldier. What does a “perfect soldier” excel at? Higher tolerance to pain, better endurance, an easier time adjusting to G-forces in extremes, complete and total focus on orders, obeying without any question at all… Basically he wanted a machine inside a human body. Tack onto that the need for him to be the ideal pilot for this operation consisting of mass genocide, and we can assume Dekim wouldn’t want just average, run of the mill training.

It’s not exactly known how old Heero was when he started his pilot training, but _Episode Zero_ shows Heero on Earth for a mission in AC 191, making him eleven years old. We can assume that J found Heero not long after Odin bit the dust, which would make him eight years old. The thing that makes children excellent soldiers is the fact that they’re young, impressionable, easy to manipulate, and easy to sculpt into whatever image you want. Heero’s training likely started as soon as possible, where Dekim took an already made blade and honed it into something even more dangerous.

Heero’s combat training possibly consisted of how to use different types of guns ranging from pistols to rifles to everything in between, including anything standard issue in the Alliance and OZ (in case Heero needed to acquire weapons on-site). It’s likely he learned how to use knives and fight hand-to-hand. Likely, Heero learned the art of improvisation, turning whatever was at his disposal into a weapon in the event he was caught without his suit and needed to defend himself. Heero could have known some of this thanks to Odin, but Dekim would want his weapon to be able to adapt to a multitude of different situations no matter what the conditions were.

Heero would have also gone through desensitization training, reinforcing what he learned as an assassin. When exposed to something over a period of time, regardless of whether it’s gruesome or not, Heero would end up conditioned to see that as his new “normal” and adjust to the stimulus as a result. If one sees death and blood and explosions every single day, after a while it’s old hat. That doesn’t mean Heero would learn to enjoy killing, but he would be able to take someone out without having a negative, visceral response. Things such as images and video are commonly used, and questions would be issued after to gauge Heero’s reaction to the various stimuli. Other aids are “killing simulators,” where one is an active participant, but there are no real consequences. What these simulations would do is let Heero see killing others as mundane as brushing his teeth. These kinds of tools are used to similar ends in real life, so extrapolating a similar purpose in Gundam Wing is a reasonable assumption.

Dehumanization is also a major component in overriding the brain’s natural leaning towards compassion towards another human. It teaches Heero to leave his compassion and emotions locked up somewhere, to be retrieved later when a situation calls for it. If Heero’s mission is to blow up an OZ mobile suit base, and he does it, and many people die, including some “collateral casualties,” Heero shouldn’t feel bad about it. He completed his mission; those OZ soldiers are eliminated. It’s expected that civilians will get caught in the crossfire.

To this point, we’ve discussed combat training using various weapons such as guns. What about mobile suit training? After all, Heero has as his main weapon a 16-meter-tall mobile suit with Gundanium alloy armor, and they’re considered much more advanced than just a standard Leo. All standardized mobile suits pilot the same, so Heero would have no problems learning the controls of them: if he learns on one suit, he can pilot all of them. Suits like Aries and Taurus are based on the Leo, with some modifications since they are more “specialized” suits (whereas the Leo is more of a general all-purpose suit). For his training, Heero likely had to learn how to pilot the two (at the time) standard issue mobile suits (Leo and Aries) in addition to learning how to pilot this state-of-the-art mobile suit.

In contrast, Gundams are not standardized. Each Gundam has a different specialty, each pilot has their own way of combat fighting, and this is reflected in their cockpits. Heero’s cockpit is set up differently than Trowa’s, for instance. Because of the individual nature, only Heero can pilot Wing Gundam effectively. Him learning the controls doesn’t grant him access to knowing how other Gundams work. To some extent, the Gundams are all similar to each other, but the way the cockpits are laid out to do different things is tailored more to the individual pilots, as we see with Trowa teaching Heero about the different controls and how to properly pilot Heavyarms ahead of his duel with Zechs. Just because you know how another’s Gundam is laid out, doesn’t mean that you can effectively pilot it without more in-depth training. Unfortunately, there is no data on how Gundam (or mobile suit in general) cockpits _work_ , but judging from the schematics, it has controls similar to aircraft.

Therefore, in terms of what mobile suit training Heero likely would have encountered, I turned to fighter jet pilot training, because they deal with a lot of g-force and thus must undergo a lot of physical conditioning exercises. A lot of it focuses on the extremities and torso, because clenching your muscles to force blood through your veins at higher g-force is important so you don’t encounter GLOC (g-force-induced loss of consciousness). Physically, Heero would end up with the body of a sprinter. Dekim would’ve worked him to his limits and pushed him beyond, over and over. But the human body can only take so much, and the human body isn’t perfect.

To create the “perfect soldier,” Dekim would need to turn to science to fill in the gaps and increase Heero’s abilities. He can do all the leg and arm exercises he wants but at some point, his body will give out, and the exercise will do more harm than good. So how would he accomplish this? He could create a cybernetically enhanced human being, replacing human body parts with robotic equivalents, and of course there’s genetic engineering. More than likely, Heero underwent some genetic engineering, which is definitely the easiest, albeit very expensive, way to quickly weaponize a human being.

There are two types of genetic engineering when it comes to human beings, but only one would apply to Heero, which is somatic gene modification. It’s where DNA is inserted that overrides whatever DNA they need changed. One can have things added, removed, improved, changed around completely, etc. You want blue eyes instead of brown? Through somatic gene modifications, you can do that. You want better muscles? There they are. In my research I couldn’t find much about it, because it’s only used for gene therapy purposes and even then, that’s still a relatively “new” thing with a bunch of ethical debates surrounding it.

But Dekim is a man who doesn’t worry about things like “ethics.” He wants a weapon that can accomplish whatever mission given without worrying about an untimely demise. So you muck around in his DNA so that that’s possible. But did Heero actually have genetic modifications done? More than likely, because little else would explain how he could survive the percussive force from Wing Gundam’s self-detonation, outside of him having the luck of the devil on his side.

As an example of how genetic engineering could have played a role in Heero’s endurance and pain tolerance, in episode 3 Sally remarks that Heero had quite a few broken bones and fractures, but the only visible injuries found were the two bullet wounds given to him by Duo, and as we witnessed in episode 2, Heero didn’t let those bullet wounds stop him from trying to accomplish the mission at hand. Can you naturally acquire a higher pain tolerance? To some extent, yes, but not to the extent of ignoring several fractures and some bullet wounds plus being able to reset your own thigh bone after rolling down a cliff.

(Not to mention the amount of times Heero falls from his cockpit and smacks his head on the ground with seemingly no repercussions.)

**III. Mental & Emotional Effects of Training**

So…how would this all effect Heero emotionally, in the long run?

Heero compartmentalizes. He tries to not let his emotions get the better of him when he’s out on the battlefield, because in war there’s no need for things like compassion when you’re more concerned about surviving. It goes hand-in-hand with the desensitization because one ends up seeing soldiers as less human than oneself. In essence, he ends up dehumanizing the enemy: if they’re not human, then it’s okay. Naturally Dekim would more than likely attempt to have Heero view all those on Earth as less than human. OZ isn’t human. The Alliance isn’t human. Those who oppose the Colony Liberation Organization and the Barton Foundation? Not human. He did, after all, plot for mass-genocide of those who lived on Earth via colony drop and five Gundams.

Compartmentalization only helped Heero so much. Sure, killing soldiers, killing whoever the target was, he could do that no problem. But what of civilians, innocent people who weren’t even involved in the war effort at all? In the process of completing a mission, a little girl and her dog (not to mention everyone else in that building) died. What did that girl do to deserve such a violent end? For a boy whose moral compass points at “killing is bad and I hate it,” he feels remorse. The human brain is coded that way, and Heero can’t overcome what makes humans a step or two above other animals.

“This is a war! Sacrificing the general public is of no relevance,” says Dekim, before he orders J to retrain him. “Our weapon has no use for human kindness!” The kind of retraining Heero undergoes is never mentioned, but it probably involves further desensitization, so that Heero can learn to separate his feelings from the war at hand even further, compartmentalizing them even more.

Because Heero loathes killing, it creates a massive amount of cognitive dissonance that he can ignore to some extent, but it always leaves him feeling uncomfortable. Heero states in _Frozen Teardrop_ that though he got used to killing (with Odin), he never got used to the feelings it left in him. This can lead to self-loathing. He is constantly fighting what he is—a weapon, a soldier—and what he feels he is.

In the dub, Doctor J says in that scene with Dekim, “Do you really believe Heero Yuy would be pleased if we buried his humanity?” Most hearing that line would assume he’s referring to humans on Earth, which he is. But if you look at it another way, Doctor J is asking, “Do you think Heero Yuy would be happy if we killed this boy’s humanity?”

Heero is so remorseful that, in Episode Zero, after Heero buries the puppy, he points a gun to his head and states that his mission is complete. Presumably Heero had a plan to end his life—whether that is literal or symbolic as he did with Mariemaia in _Endless Waltz_ , we don’t know, because J intervenes, and gives him three options: to go through with Operation Meteor as planned, to kill him and run, or the third option, which is just a cryptic, “You should already know.”

Because of all of this, Dekim Barton nearly lost the weapon he went through all this trouble to make. This weapon with a fatal flaw.

**IV. J’s Motivation, and How He Views Heero**

And this brings us to Doctor J, who was presumably in charge of creating said weapon. Doctor J has his own ways of “getting back” at people and going against things he doesn’t agree with. Examine what he and the other four engineers do with Mercurius and Vayeate. They didn’t want to create Gundams for OZ, but didn’t have much of a choice, so they created two separate suits that only worked if they were paired up and were kind of useless otherwise. Libra’s beam cannon shuts down and ends up offline for a few hours after every firing, effectively “breaking” with every use, which was part of the design schematics as a bit of a “screw you” because this was Operation Meteor all over again, just with someone else at the helm.

Doctor J always gave Heero a choice when it came to missions when Heero was in no position to even have a choice. When the Barton Foundation wanted Vice Foreign Minister Darlian assassinated in _Episode Zero_ because he may have learned about Operation Meteor’s details, J told Heero he had three options: cooperate with the Barton Foundation and commit to the assassination, go against the Foundation and protect Darlian, or just ignore the entire thing and consider it not his problem. When Heero asked which he should choose, Doctor J insisted, “It’s up to you.” In the end, Heero thwarts the assassination attempt, because Darlian’s done nothing to deserve a death sentence.

When it came to Operation Meteor, Doctor J again gave Heero three choices, knowing that Heero wouldn’t go along with the slaughtering of innocents and instead change it to a more targeted mission set, focused on who was directly responsible for the conflict. Heero is supposed to be this soldier who obeys orders without question. Give an order, a mission, tell him what to do, and he will carry it out with no hesitation, at least in theory. But Heero changes his task into something that is more in line with what he feels is right.

J could’ve possibly come up with some kind of drug, or some kind of genetic modification, that turned off the empathy center in his brain and made him a ruthless killer. He’s a “mad scientist” and this is science-fiction, where anything is possible if you come up with a plausible enough explanation. There are different kinds of psychological conditioning he could’ve used to flip the “kill switch.” He could’ve broken Heero mentally and built him back up in the image that Dekim Barton desired. And yet he didn’t. He created this very dangerous soldier, but not once did he not give Heero a choice in handling a situation. He foiled Dekim’s “perfect soldier” plan because killing everyone and everything indiscriminately is not what Heero Yuy would have ever agreed to when he saw firsthand what the Alliance and OZ were doing. Doctor J left OZ because he didn’t agree with what they were doing.

Doctor J acknowledges that Heero is dangerous, that he is a human weapon designed and tailored to kill and follow through on his objectives—he tells us as much in episode 5, and brags about it a bit to the other scientists when Heero comes for them in a half finished Vayeate. But J also acknowledges that Heero is a kindhearted boy who understands the struggle of the colonies. He could’ve destroyed that and he didn’t. He saw something in Heero that he also saw again in Relena: the determination to change the world.

To say his relationship with Heero is complicated is taking the easy way out. Indeed, J isn’t this warm and doting father figure. He’s quite eccentric, for one thing. What sets him apart from, say, Dekim, is the fact that even though he calls Heero “my weapon” (not even Dekim’s weapon, J takes full responsibility for Heero), he still sees Heero as a human being. Instead of simply touting about how dangerous a soldier Heero is, he makes sure to let Relena know that despite appearances, Heero is actually quite sweet. Underneath that seemingly cold exterior, there is a lot of warmth there, but the situation he’s in makes him unable to utilize it.

J’s thwarted all of Heero’s attempts to prematurely end his life—he changed the frequency on Heero’s suit so that triggering the self-detonation mechanism wouldn’t trigger the Gundam’s, thus causing a misfire (the salt from the ocean only further aided him). The only time Heero actually went through with an attempt on his life was when he was ordered, by J, to surrender. Perhaps J knew that it wouldn’t kill him, that Heero would survive, albeit severely injured.

I guess if you want to simplify it, J knows Heero’s abilities and shows him respect, both as Pilot 01 and just as Heero. In his eyes, Heero is still 100 percent human, regardless of whatever enhancements he’s gone through. And to me, that speaks volumes. And though Heero might not necessarily be okay with everything J did to him (the TV show seems to suggest he has a bit of resentment if those ZERO induced thoughts about getting rid of “those who toy with my life” are any indication), one could argue that Heero does also have some respect for J, or at least doesn’t outright hate the guy.

**V. Dekim & Heero**

Heero doesn’t show familiarity with Dekim as a person; in _Endless Waltz_ he tells Duo, “I’m more concerned about the man known as Dekim. The name Dekim Barton rings a bell,” suggesting that he likely hasn’t even met the man, or that Dekim was more in the shadows and the only one Heero actually interacted with for his training was Doctor J. When Heero and Dekim actually interact during Wing Zero’s final fight, Dekim doesn’t act like he even recognizes Heero, making me wonder if _Dekim_ ever had any sort of interaction with the weapon he was trying to create, or if Doctor J was literally the middleman of all of this. Wouldn’t Dekim know what Heero was capable of as Heero aimed at the shelter they were all taking refuge in? Dekim was responsible, after all, for Heero becoming this “perfect soldier,” and he’s got the ZERO System to aid him no less.

Dekim makes one final plea to get Heero to stop his assault on the shelter, and remarks to him that Relena is there. Is he trying to exploit the “flaw” in his weapon, appealing to the kindness he worked so hard to try to kill in Heero? It causes Heero to hesitate and even adjust his aim. By doing so, Heero avoids completely destroying the bunker and everyone inside—which, as we know from Heero’s flashbacks during that scene, would have been history repeating itself. Barton successfully used Heero’s emotional response in a bid to save his own skin and which worked…for a time. The bunker was still destroyed and Barton ultimately met his demise inside.

Ultimately, it seems that Heero and Dekim’s one interaction was during the climax of _Endless Waltz_ , and neither of them seem to recognize the other or have any connection beyond that Heero finds his name familiar. We never do learn if Heero figures out _why_ that name rings such a bell. Dekim was this entity that existed but ultimately had no shape or place in Heero’s life outside of being the one who ordered Doctor J to do this or that with him.

Did Dekim succeed in getting his “perfect soldier?” On paper, yes. Heero did all of the training, had all of the modifications necessary to help with the training. At the same time, he didn’t get his weapon; rather, it’s Doctor J who lays claim to that weapon, calling Heero “his,” and is ultimately the one who shaped Heero into the soldier he becomes: someone who is a danger to his enemies, but is first and foremost still human.


End file.
